High school coach David Mark Temple was arrested today in the 1999 slaying of his pregnant wife, a case that captured widespread attention and drew later comparisons to the sensational Laci Peterson murder in California.

Temple, 36, of Richmond, is charged with murder for the death of Katy High School teacher Belinda Trace Temple, who was eight months pregnant with the couple's second child at the time of her slaying. The 30-year-old woman was found shot in the head at close range in the family's Katy home in the 22500 block of Round Valley Drive in January 1999.

A criminal complaint accuses David Temple of firing the shot that killed his pregnant wife.

Temple, who has since remarried, was arrested around 7:45 a.m. this morning as he was driving to work at Hastings High School in the Alief school district. He was stopped at Beechnut and Texas 6 by a marked sheriff's patrol car and showed no reaction at being arrested, said Lt. Danny Billingsley of the Harris County Sheriff's Homicide Division.

Billingsley said recent evidence helped propel an arrest in the nearly six-year-old case, but he declined to elaborate.

"There is no 'something new' that brought us here -- it was just the totality of the evidence finally reached that point," Billingsley said today. "Some of this evidence is rather recent."

He would not discuss what evidence authorities had found.

Detectives also interviewed Temple's wife, Heather Scott Temple, who married him in June 2001, more than two years after the slaying. Billingsley would not reveal what, if anything, she told detectives or whether she was emotionally distraught.

Harris County Sheriff Tommy Thomas notified Belinda Temple's family in Nacogdoches of the arrest around noon today.

"We're very excited at this point -- it's been a long time coming," said Belinda Temple's father, Tom Lucas, 63. "We can't say too much because we've got a trial ahead of us yet, but I hope justice will be served.

"In some ways, I'm sorry the law for unborn babies wasn't in effect when this took place, because it would have been treated as a double homicide. In my opinion, it was a double homicide," Lucas said.

Temple's twin sister was emotional at news of the arrest.

"I'm just in shock right now -- i just don't even have words to describe how I feel right now. I've been in a daze for six years," said Brenda Lucas, 35, of Nacogdoches.

Belinda Temple was pregnant with a baby girl at the time of her death. At the time of the crime, David Temple told detectives he came home with their son, then 3 years old, to find a window broken in the rear of their house.

Constable's deputies who initially thought the woman had been killed by an intruder were unable to reach the broken window because of the family's dog and had to wait for David Temple to put the animal in the garage before they could get to the woman's body. Nothing was missing from the home.

The accused man's bond is set at $30,000. A call to his Richmond area home was not immediately returned.